Down and Out in Beverly Hills (1986)

In Down and Out in Beverly Hills we meet Jerry Baskin, a homeless
man who is happy talking all day to his dog ‘Kerouac’. Jerry lives a care free
life being a beach bum, no worries, no responsibilities. Everything seems fine
and dandy for Jerry until one day, as Jerry sleeps, Kerouac decides to go with
a nice lady who offers him some food. Suddenly, Jerry is left without his dog
pal and life turns meaningless for him. Apparently Kerouac was the only thing
bringing Jerry any joy. So, with all this sadness and despair in mind, Jerry
decides he wants to commit suicide, so he walks into a random house in Beverly
Hills, empties his lungs and jumps into the pool, hoping to sink to the bottom
and die a quick death. Unfortunately, Mr. Whiteman, the owner of the house sees
him jumping and decides to save Jerry’s life. From there on in, Mr. Whiteman
decides to take Jerry in for a couple of days, until he can stand on his own
two feet, turns out Jerry stays far longer than a couple of days!

Down and Out in Beverly Hills reminded me in some ways of
Takashi Miike’s Visitor Q (2001), a film in which an ominous character simply
and inexplicably becomes a silent observer of a Japanese family, where this
character came from no one knows, but there he is. The purpose of this kind of
character is to analyze the family unit from an objective standpoint, by having
a stranger visit them. In Down and Out in Beverly Hills it’s Jerry Baskin (Nick
Nolte), a homeless person, who gets to visit a multi millionaire Beverly Hills
family, The Whitemans. In this family, everyone is unhappy, the wife is unhappy
with her sex life, the husband is having an affair with his Latin maid, the kid
wants to tell his parents he is gay but doesn’t know how to go about it, the
daughter is anorexic…each family member has got some sort of issue going on
that they have to resolve, and Jerry, like some sort of god sent thing, is here
to tell them what they need to do to be happy, he might be homeless, but he
knows a thing or two about life. Jerry starts spewing advice left and right, making
everyone happier after they listen to him. In this way, the film also reminded
me of What About Bob? (1991) which coincidentally also starred Richard Dreyfuss
as the father of yet another high class dysfunctional family. What About Bob? Actually
reworks the same basic premise of Down and Out in Beverly Hills, but instead of
a bum, it’s a crazy guy that invades the family unit. I guess it could also be compared to films like Trading Places (1983) and Brewsters Millions (1985) because of the whole 'rags to riches' thing, but in my opinion, these last two films I've just mentioned are funny and good, Down and Out in Beverly Hills is far superior.

Certain elements in the film hint at the fact that the
filmmakers wanted to comment on racial issues with this film; I’m sure it’s no
coincidence that the rich millionaire family in the film is called ‘The
Whitemans’. Here’s an example of how
this film comments on racial issues, there is a moment in which the security
alarm on Dave Whiteman’s home goes off; seconds later, there are police cars,
helicopters and police dogs swarming his house! It’s at that moment that Dave’s
neighbor (played by Little Richard) comes out of his home screaming at the top
of his lungs, complaining that the police don’t answer his calls as efficiently
as they should because he is black! He gives a pretty incendiary speech about
it. The Whitemans have a Hispanic live in made which Dave Whiteman is having an
affair with. After she has a talk with Jerry (the bum guru who introduces her
to subversive literature) she starts thinking that Mr. Whiteman only uses her,
that he would never take her seriously because he considers her “third world”.
Basically, this film takes the rich “conservative” white man and places him
right smack in the middle of two of the biggest issues in society: race and
sexual orientation. I thought it was hilarious
that at one point in the film Dave Whiteman is surrounded by a homeless man, by
Blacks, Chinese, Hispanics, and even a possibly gay son, so basically, the
ending of the film is one gigantic smorgasbord of races and sexual orientations!
A police helicopter flies by, sees the whole shebang from above and screams “what
a fucking party!” I was laughing like a madman. But it’s the symbolisms that
make the scene impact you, we’re all in the same boat, we’re all on the same
party, let’s just have a good time.

Add to the funny and the smarts, a pitch perfect cast!
Richard Dreyfuss has always been great at playing characters that lose their
temper easily and here he does it again. There’s this scene where he is telling
his son that he should start learning the ropes of his coat hanger business,
and his son tells him that it’s not his thing to which Dave replies “You don’t like
hangers? It’s hangers that clothe you and it’s hangers that feed you!” Just
hilarious, but Dreyfuss doesn’t just play the hot tempered dude, his character
is layered, Dave is a rich guy who’s
doing some soul searching, he sees a freedom and a happiness in Jerry that he doesn’t
have in his life. Same goes with Bette Midler who plays the air head wife who’s
lost all passion in her life, she goes from guru, to guru looking for meaning
in her life. And finally, Jerry as played by Nick Nolte is the icing on the
cake. He does the bum thing great, so well that even when Dave fixes him up
with a haircut and new clothes, you still see that suffering and that pain
beneath the skin, in his soul. So we get all around great performances! Even
the dog; ‘Matisse’ is likable, in fact, he is sometimes the most humane of all
the characters.

Down and Out in Beverly Hills was based on a French film from
director Jean Renoir called ‘Boudu sauve des eaux’ which translated means ‘Boudu
saved from drowning’, so in many ways, this is kind of like a remake, but from
what I hear, not so much. I haven’t seen Renoir’s film, but I’m guessing it has
little to do with Beverly Hills. It probably just borrowed the premise and went
its own way with it, good thing is I am now curious to see Renoir’s film. All in all, I’d say that Down and Out in
Beverly Hills was a hilarious movie, personally, I wasn’t expecting it to be as
funny as it ended up being, and I certainly didn’t expect the film to have a
brain as well as some heart, 80’s comedies sometimes end up being a little too
silly, but this one had just the right balance. Sadly, all too often in today’s
modern comedies vulgarity or repulsive situations are mistaken for comedy, and I
personally hate that. I much prefer films like Down and Out in Beverly Hills, truly
funny films, with a bit of an edge and a whole lot of heart. I miss this kind of comedy, it’s the kind of
comedy that John Hughes or Paul Mazursky (this films director) took pride in
making, comedies that commented on social issues, but at the same time made us
laugh like crazy. Very few directors do this today, comedies with a brain, so
clever that you don’t even notice the themes that are being addressed, you just
laugh and laugh. It’s only later that you realize, wait a second; this film was
actually saying something! Truly one of the best comedies of the 80’s, if you
wanna take a trip down to the 80’s and laugh a whole lot while doing it, this
is the way to go.

5 comments:

Well, technically it was Touchstone Pictures, but since they were a subsidiary of Disney yeah, it was Disney alright. Since then they've gone on to release many R rated films through their subsidiary companies, like Miramax for example, which was also a subsidiary of Disney.